Sophie
so large and cold, feels small and stifling today. Not because it’s busier than usual. If anything, there are barely any students. But Evan is sitting next to me, and his presence is a vortex, sucking the air from the room.
I sit as far from him as I can, my eyes stubbornly fixed on the desk in front of us. I’ve not made eye contact with him since he arrived for our session.
Tutoring Evan is just like everything in my life: I don’t have to enjoy it, I simply have to endure it and use it as another stepping stone to the life I want.
Deadlines for university applications are fast approaching, and my applications are strong because of everything I’ve done here. And that includes my participation in Miss Bailey’s tutoring programme. Once it secures me some offers, once Spearcrest is in my past and I can finally live the life I want, Evan will become nothing more than a distant memory.
The pain he inflicted on me will be forgotten over time; his presence in my life will fade like a scar.
The strength and comfort of this thought are enough to allow me to turn up for our session today. This half-term, we are both studying the same text, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and I’ve brought enough work that there shouldn’t be any opportunities to talk.
But of course, Evan doesn’t get the memo. He keeps sneaking glances at me even though he’s meant to be reading the extract in front of him. I ignore his attempts to make eye contact.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally, his voice catching. He clears his throat, and repeats more clearly, “I’m so sorry, Sutton.”
I clench my jaw. What I was to tell him is to shove his apology down his own throat and choke on it. What I say instead is, “Have you finished reading the extract?”
“Did you hear me? I said I’m sorry.”
I finally look up. I try to look right past his handsome features and sky-blue eyes at the ugliness inside and give it a polite smile.
“I heard you. I accept your apology. Have you finished reading the extract?”
He sighs. “Yeah.”
I hand him another sheet. “Right, then let’s work through these questions.”
He listens as I talk him through character analysis and key themes. He nods when I tell him what to do, and when I hand him a sheet of questions, he takes it and, to my relief, gets to work.
He works in perfect silence for several minutes, but the respite is short-lived. With a loud sigh, he puts his pen down and looks up.
“You can’t just say you accept my apology if you don’t mean it.”
“I mean it,” I say without looking at him, keeping my eyes on the book of critical analysis I’m taking notes from. “So get back to work.”
“You’re just saying that to shut me up.”
I clench my jaw, forcing myself to calm down. After the humiliation he’s put me through, I’ve decided to never let him get another rise out of me. I count down from ten in my head. Then I say, “What would you like me to tell you, Evan?”
“I don’t know! Tell me the truth.”
“The truth is that I forgive you and I want to move on, which is why I’m here to help you with Lit. So could you please do your work?”
He’s quiet for a bit, but I can tell he’s still staring at me. I refuse to look at him, pointedly turning the pages of my book. My eyes burn, but I’d rather die than cry in front of him again.
I remind myself of why he can’t get to me: I don’t care what he says about me. I don’t care what the Spearcrest kids think about me. In a year, none of this will matter.
Evan gets back to work. He gets through the worksheet, then I give him some context notes to read and summarise. He does so without protest or comment.
This is the best way to get through all of this. In the bleak austerity of the study hall, in the sallow lamplight and the icy silence between us, the heat of his kisses, of his mouth between my legs or the quick and intense sex we had seems like some strange, fast-vanishing dream.
No, not a dream.
A nightmare.
I’m in the middle of making a bullet point list of key events when Evan speaks again, startling me slightly.
“I shouldn’t have told the school about your job, okay? It was a shitty thing for me to do.”
I bite the inside of my cheeks. Why won’t he let it go? I’m letting it go. I’m letting everything go. So why won’t he?
“Don’t worry about it,” I grind out.
“I do worry about it, though. You’re right, you trusted me with one thing, and I fucked you over, and I shouldn’t have, and I regret it, and I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for telling everyone about—”
“Think about it this way,” I say in my sweetest voice, interrupting him before he gets any further. “I was the one breaking the school rules, so, technically speaking, you did the right thing. As you can see, there’s nothing for you to worry about, alright?”
He’s staring at me, but he can stare all he wants because I’m not going to look at him.
“I shouldn’t have mocked you in front of everyone,” he says, his voice low and rough. “I feel shit about that too. I never meant to hurt you.”
I hate that he’s forcing me to remember it. My cheeks grow hot, and discomfort twists my insides into knots. I swallow hard.
“I already said I accept your apology, so stop apologising. Here.”
I hand him the list of bullet points. “Find some quotes for these events.”
He takes the sheet in one hand and grabs my wrist in the other.
“Look at me.”
I don’t want to. I really don’t want to, because the more he apologises, the more I’m getting restless and upset. I don’t want to argue with him, I don’t want to look at him, and I definitely don’t want to cry in front of him again. But I’m not going to fight him, and I might as well get this over as quickly as possible.
I look at him and try to keep myself as neutral as possible.
His blue eyes are huge, almost green in the yellow lamplight. His expression, normally so open and cheerful, is transformed: full of regret and pain and sadness.
That makes me angrier than anything else. What does he have to feel sad about? He doesn’t deserve pain, he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, and he certainly doesn’t deserve the time I’m sacrificing as the altar of his ego right now.
I don’t say any of this—I know better.
“Sophie. I’m genuinely trying to tell you how sorry I am,” he says, his voice raw and low. “So why are you being like this?”
Pulling my wrist free from his grip, I meet his eyes with a cold, direct gaze.
“Look, Evan. I came here to tutor you because that’s what you said you wanted. Remember? Now I’m here, just as you wanted. Everything, exactly as you wanted. You kept everybody away from me so no boy would ever come near me—as you wanted, and we’ve had sex—as you wanted. Now, everybody knows you were right all along, that I’ve always been desperate to be with you. Everybody thinks I’m your worthless desperate groupie, just like you wanted. Now you’ve said you wanted to apologise, and I accepted your apology. So what more can you possibly want?”
He hesitates. His eyes search my face, almost fearfully, but there’s nothing there for him to find. Everything I said is the truth.
“Nothing,” he says finally.
He takes the sheet and gets on with the work. We work mostly in silence for the rest of the session, and the second our two hours are over, I pack my stuff and stand.
“I’ll see you next week.”
“Right,” he says.
He stays sitting down while I shoulder my backpack, staring at me while I tuck my chair in. He opens his mouth to say something, but I turn and leave before he can.
Evan
I gonna do?”
My face buried into my pillow, I let out a long, angry yell. Then I bolt upright on my bed and glare at Zachary, who’s reclining in the armchair by the window, his chin propped on his fist.
“Your stupid idea didn’t fucking work, Zach!”
“Oh. You actually apologised?”
“I practically begged for her forgiveness.”
“Hm. And what did she say?”
I throw myself back onto my bed with a groan of despair. “She accepted my apology.”
“What else did you want her to say?”
“I didn’t want her to say anything else. I just wanted her to mean it.”
Zachary is staring out of the window, deep in thought. One of his ankles rests elegantly on his knee. He has a sort of cool, British energy I sometimes envy, like nothing can get to him. I bet if I was more like Zachary, more thoughtful and poised, Sophie would like me more.
“I mean, I can see why she would struggle to forgive you so easily,” he says in a thoughtful tone. “But how do you know she didn’t mean it when she said she accepted your apology?”
“Because she was like…” I close my eyes, covering them with my forearm.
In the darkness, I play the spectrum of Sophie’s expressions. Her sardonic amusement when she used to tutor me at my house. Her icy fury when she refused to tutor me. Her hurt and betrayal when I insulted her in front of everyone. Her flush of tipsy desire when I kissed her open mouth that fateful night.
“Because she was like… empty. No expression on her face, no emotion, nothing.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Sophie always feels stuff. She gets annoyed or fed up or frustrated or angry or sad. She doesn’t just sit there like a blank whiteboard. But that’s exactly what it was like when she tutored me yesterday. She was like a wall. She barely looked at me.”
“Well, she’s probably still angry at you—rightfully so, I should think.”
“But I apologised! I did what you said!”
“I said to start with an apology. She’s accepted it, which is a step forward. Or if she didn’t mean it, it’s not a step at all, but at least it’s not another step backwards, right?”
“Ugh, why are you always talking in riddles? Say what you mean, man!”
Zachary stands and leans down over me where I’m lying in my bed, glaring at me.
“Then listen up, you whiny fuckwit. An apology is like an introduction to showing someone you’re sorry for what you’ve done. You didn’t just make her lose her job, you essentially betrayed her trust and then humiliated her in front of everyone that’s already been looking down at her. At this point, you should be thanking your lucky star she doesn’t slap you in the face every time she sees you. Now you’ve apologised—great start, but it’s only a start. I don’t even see how you would expect her to forgive you so easily. If you want her forgiveness, then fucking earn it. But let’s be honest. You don’t want to be good to Sophie Sutton, because you’re scared it’s going to make you weak. You’d rather have the power and control of being an arsehole to her and making her hate you because that’s less of a risk. But guess what—we’re not fucking kids anymore. We’re adults. We’re about to go off into the real world, and Sophie is already basically in it. So you’re going to have to step up and grow the fuck up. Sophie doesn’t want you because she deserves better—you know that’s the truth. So be fucking better. Otherwise, let her go and move the fuck on.”
There is a long, heavy, tense silence. I’m staring at Zachary in absolute shock. This has got to be the first time I’ve heard him speak for so long—he’s usually a guy of few words, but boy can he talk if he wants to.
When I don’t say anything he claps his hands together. “Right. And on that note… I’m off.”
He strides briskly out, and I’m left alone in my room. His words whirl like a tornado in my mind, and in the middle of that tornado, standing in the eye of the storm, Sophie.
What he said is hard to hear, but it’s the truth. I do have to make it up to Sophie. I do have to grow up and treat her well. And I want to. I want nothing more than to shower Sophie with everything I could possibly give her. If I could, I would lay anything she asked at her feet: love, affection, adoration, gifts and tributes.
But Sophie doesn’t want anything from me. So how on earth do I earn her forgiveness or her trust or her love, if she won’t accept so much as an apology from me?
I roll over onto my back and stare at the ceiling. What the fuck am I going to do? It’s not even like I can google how to win Sophie back, or how to earn Sophie’s friendship. I groan. If only there was an expert on Sophie Sutton or some sort of Sophie-whisperer I could consult.
I sit up.
How could I not have thought about it before? There is a Sophie-whisperer, right here at Spearcrest, and not even one, but two of them. Two Sophie-whisperers who have somehow managed to get themselves right into her heart.
And I happen to share a class with one of them.
